"It's Lonely At The Top"

Where do I start with this blog? I finally made it into my site and have been hard at work. Of course, by work I mean I’ve been trying to keep my sanity. Let’s talk about the biggest problem for me right now, language.
Tamazight is a dialect of Amazight, which means that there is no written form of it. It is only spoken. It is also an ancient language that has changed and evolved over time. Since the indigenous Berber people have arrived several empires have conquered their territory and left, these empires being the Romans, Arabs, and recently the French. Only the Arabs have stayed for good and have maintained political control over Morocco. The significance of this is that the Berber language stopped evolving on its own and started adapting words from these other languages. More importantly, the language never became a truly written language.

Writing a language down allows it to be definitive and set in stone, “this word means this,” and everyone knows it because they read it. All languages are fluid and change over time (we aren’t still speaking Old English) but all people experience this change and learn from it through communication. On the other hand, when not everyone is reading the same material or communicating with each other, the language is able to change course as it likes without the rest of the world knowing. Especially when the people speaking that language are isolated and self-sufficient. There is no contact with others and their language becomes distinctly different than the communities around them. That’s incredibly frustrating for goofball Americans who spend two months of their life believing that the language their learning in one region will be understood in the other.


I am starting over almost from scratch. To ask what your name is in Azilal where I was training you would say, “may sminik.” But now I have to say, “may dims.” To add to the pain, I’m dealing with people who don’t know how to listen to my heavy foreign accent because I’m in a region that has never had a foreigner try to speak the language. English is derived from Anglo-saxon origins with a heavy emphasis of added vowels where we don’t expect them. For example, try saying “A” without an “ee” sound at the end. It’s impossible because the “ee” is an added vowel that helps make the word. Tamazight is more latin based and involves speaking straight vowels, i.e. “A” sounds like “eh.” So when I say something like, “I hate your language,” everyone thinks “ayee haeet youar lang- shit, I’m done listening to this guy.”


Luckily, there is a monstrous advantage to knowing Tamazight, and it lies in the politics. A man of Arab descent and a man of Berber descent are indistinguishable except in dress and name, but there is still a political divide between the two after centuries of Arabic political control. To add to this, king Hassan II had outlawed the teaching of all Amazight dialects (Tamazight, Tashlehit, and Tarafit) after Morocco’s independence from France and Spain in the early 50’s. The king’s intention was to unite the kingdom under one language (a common person in the nation will speak up to three or four languages), which would make life easier for everyone but is impossible to do without stepping on the toes of the Berbers. Hassan II has since died and the laws have changed to allow the teaching of Amazight under the new king Mohamed VI. But the divide still exists between Arabs and Berbers in language. Many people in large cities that are largely Arabic refuse to have an Amazight language spoken in their house, only Arabic. Here in the Berber mountains you are not very special if you are speaking Arabic, but no one learns Amazight unless they are from that area. Especially not white tourists. So when some white American guy comes to your mountain speaking what sounds like the faintest bit of Tamazight and says he wants to learn more…the shit hits the fan! I am a rock star. I can walk five miles down the road after being in town for four days and have truckloads of construction workers yelling my Moroccan name, “HDDU!” People will sit and listen to me stumble over their language like an imbecile for hours on end and love every minute of it. I’m sure in a month it won’t be the same, but for right now I’m going to soak it up.

This doesn’t mean that life is easy. Because they’ve never had someone trying to learn their language before, the people here don’t understand the concept of speaking slowly and deliberately. My host family doesn’t know what to do with me either. The women are all too scared to talk to me and most of the men can’t get past asking me if I’m a Muslim or not. All these problems amount to a roller coaster ride of emotions. I feel like a superhero in the morning and will feel like a prisoner in the afternoon. It’s too bad Randy Newman didn’t live on a mountain as a foreigner, because “it’s lonely at the top.”

Stuck In Tounfite With The Mobile Blues

Hey there folks, sorry it’s been so long, but I’ve been in a bit of a transition. I’m moving from Ait Helouan to a small town far up in the Eastern High Atlas Mountains. Most other peace corps volunteers (PCV) have entered into their sites a week ago. But I still haven’t even set foot in my site. For the past week I have been coordinating with the local Gendarme (like the police but not, I’ll explain another time) to have much of my paper work processed, helped with a 5K in nearby Middlt (When I say nearby I mean 3 hours away) to raise AIDS awareness, and made my way to the large city of Khunifera to meet with the heads of the Khunifera health department (Khunifera is my province). I’ve been a busy man and am excited to get to my site tomorrow. But what am I going to actually do once I get to my site? That’s a big problem indeed. So let me deliberate a little as to what I’m thinking or at least have heard.

While in Khunifera, I met with several department heads and heard many different ideas of what is needed. It seems that there is a basic need to connect the people in these rural bled (country side) areas to the medical support that is available. For instance in my site there is a doctor and nurse, a clinic where I will hopefully work where pregnant women can be examined, children can be vaccinated, and pre/post-natal care can be delivered. But no one goes. Why?

It can’t be money because all the vaccinations and exams are free. The clinic is in site so transportation shouldn’t be such a large problem, although for some women in farther out cities this very well could be a complication. But from what I’ve heard from previous volunteers, a big problem is that these women don’t trust the doctors or simply don’t see the importance.

So my job is behavior modification, i.e. get these women to trust the doctor/nurse and to give a damn. But that raises another question, how am I going to change their behavior and get them to seek the health care they need? And is that the specific health care problem these people are facing? I don’t know. Hell, I don’t even know how to ask. So I’m going to do what every other health volunteer has told me they have done their first few months here, sit in a sbitar and talk until I just know. Until I know what people are saying, what they want, what they think, and what I can do for them.

Of course this is all if I can even get to my site. For the past two days I've waited for a big white and green cargo van called a transit to come rumbling down the street, driven by an old weathered Moroccan named Mustapha. Happened to finally meet Mustapha today as he rolled into town and I was told that he would be heading to Anemzi at 3:00. I waited from 2:30 until 5:00 unti outside a cafe with everything I own until I finally was told the transit left at 1:30. Enshahala (God willing) I will make it tomorrow. Looks like tonight is another night at my fellow PCVs' houses.

Peace America!